


Scary Stories to tell in the Office

by Notawriterjustalurker



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghost Stories, Halloween, Minor Matt Murdock/Karen Page, POV Matt Murdock, avocado shenanigans, but it’s kind of wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27279484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notawriterjustalurker/pseuds/Notawriterjustalurker
Summary: Nothing but Karen Page telling the boys a spooky story before bed....
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Karen Page
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	Scary Stories to tell in the Office

"Look, I know what it smells like," Foggy said seriously, "it smells like the best, _most delicious_ double pepperoni special from Louie & Marino's; plain for Matt, obviously, because he's too good for – " he held up his fingers, _"processed_ _meats_. But what else is it Karen? _What else is it?"_

Poor girl had barely just stepped through the door. "I thought cheese gave you heartburn?" 

Matt laughed agreeably. Give it an hour.

" _Yes_ , but — _justice_ , Karen! It smells like justice!"

 _"Ohh_ , so we're celebrating?" There was a smirk in Karen's voice as it wafted across the room, her hair and her heavy coat soaked in the zing of cold, October air. 

"Can you not tell? Look at him, look how happy he is!" Foggy bulldozed Matt's shoulder with his.

"Alright, Fogs."

"C'mon Is that a.... Is that a _teeny_ tiny smile buddy? Are we blessed?" 

He was momentarily happy, yes. But he wasn't going to _talk_ about it. "Good day, Karen?"

Her feet bounced a little. "Yes, actually Matt." She seemed pleased that he'd asked. "I dug into some leads I think might really help with the Castillo case—"

 _"Whoa whoa whoa,"_ Foggy said, "no work talk tonight! I'm all work talked out."

Karen shook her head, Matt could tell because her hair always rustled and smelt nice when she did. It had been a successful day, but also a long one, and he was particually grateful for her smile and her high tolerance for Foggy's mostly awful jokes tonight, even if he did think it strange that she could still find any increment of joy here, in this stupid office.

"It's a good job I'm an easy woman to please," Karen retorted as she pulled up a chair next to him and grabbed what he was sure was the biggest slice of pizza. "Although, it was either this, or stay just a minute longer at Ellison's office Halloween Bash." 

So that's where she'd been. The unfamiliar scent on her blouse made sense now; a pleasant mix of alcohol and candy apples. "He invited you guys too but I said you weren't really a fan of, you know… all that stuff." Her hands made a ghostly gesture, accompanied by a slightly adorable _'wooo'_ sound.

Matt knew what she meant of course, but still. "You mean _socializing?"_

Karen tutted. "No Matt, I mean _Halloween."_

"Just a thought but, isn't the world scary enough without adding ghosts and ghoulies to the mix?" 

A reasonable point.

"I'll drink to that." Matt raised his glass.

"Maybe," Karen said, "but y'know… _free_ alcohol."

"Free alcohol?" Matt changed tact, "Foggy, how could you let this happen?" 

His voice went up theatrically. "I would never stray from my one and only Matt, you know that, for only the woman who bears the _sacred eel_ can claim my liver for her e _vil biddings!"_

Now Karen's voice sounded impatient. Matt found that amusing. "So uh, Josie then?" She said.

"The drunk part'll cost ya, but the scary part's for free," Matt quipped.

Karen started giggling.

Foggy's body turned courtroom-straight all of a sudden; he waved a piece of paper around to drive home his point. "Who even believes in all that stuff anyway? Kindergarteners? Old people?"

"Not necessarily," Karen argued.

Foggy shot Matt a wrinkled up expression — skeptical probably — before laughter erupted from behind his hand. 

Karen just shrugged, unperturbed and took another bite of her pizza. "Fine, whatever."

Matt hated it when she did that, because now it was annoying him how much he wanted to know. "Don't be like that. Convince us," Matt said convincingly, a little surprised in himself, because, well, he didn't really believe in ghosts either — at least not in the sense that they were talking about, but the prospect of hearing Karen weave them an intricate tale, of listening to her voice for a while; uninterrupted, was quite an appealing thought.

She sat for a moment, thinking. Then she licked the salt from her lips and straightened up, leaned forward with her elbows on the desk and chased a piece of pizza crust around the box with her nail for a moment before speaking again. "Alright," she said simply, "I'll tell you some stories."

"Stories?" Foggy piped up. "Plural?"

"Oh yeah," she replied, "you hear all kinds of stuff out where I'm from. It's that kind of place."

"What kind of place?" Matt was curious.

"Turn the lights out first."

Foggy's hand paused over the switch. "Is that _really_ necessary?"

"I need to set the mood." 

"She needs to set the mood Foggy."

Foggy made a face and Matt heard the main lights above him cut out, which wasn't exactly a problem for him — if anything, he preferred it. 

Karen turned back to him. "So the town where I used to live, in Vermont was uh, small. I've told you that, right?" Matt nodded. "Everyone there was pretty resentful, pretty bored, nobody would admit it but no one really wanted to be there. Place was full of ghosts of all kinds, really." 

"Don't get all philosophical on us Page, I want real ghosts, the walking through walls kind, maybe a little — "

"Foggy." Matt snapped.

 _"Philosophical_ ghosts aside," Karen continued, "I mean it when I say there really wasn't anything worth visiting out there, especially in the winter," she said, "mostly, we'd just get a lot of truckers passing through."

"Those guys are about as reliable as Matt."

"I'm reliable," Matt countered defensively.

Karen tried to bite back her grin but it pinged out from behind her teeth. "I'm not saying they're reliable, I'm just saying they'd stop by a lot. And it would be my job to deal with them. Usually it was early, or really late at night. They'd eat, usually something extra greasy and disgusting. And well, they'd tell me their stories." Karen gestured for Foggy to pass her beer and she twisted it open, taking a swig before she continued. "Some of them — well, they wouldn't see another vehicle for hours out on those roads. Especially in the November, December months." She took a pause, breathed in and ran her tongue over her lips.

"But they would see other stuff."

"Old truckers tales." Foggy made a face, "if we had one those guys on the witness stand who knows what kind of stuff they'd make up."

"They've got pretty active imaginations I'll give you that."

"A lot of time on their own," Matt offered, trying to be encouraging but failing to reign in his lawyer instinct. "The mind plays tricks and stuff, right?" 

More casual. Good.

"Yeah," Karen surprisingly agreed, "yeah, that too. It's sort of on those lines actually. See, there's this thing called the black dog; gets talked about a lot. You heard of it?"

Matt pursed his lips. Foggy mirrored him. 

"The black dog — " she said it again, chewed the words in her mouth this time — slithered her tongue over them — "I'd heard tonnes of truckers mention it. Like I said, long boring roads, nothing for miles."

"What is it?" Foggy asked, "apart from the obvious."

"Well basically, they say that sometimes, driving on the road at night, you'll see a black dog." She lifted her shoulder into a shrug. "That's it really… can be as small as a coyote… as big as a moose. Sometimes, it'll dart out in front of your truck; shock you enough to slam on the brakes. Sometimes it'll run alongside you, keeping pace and then disappear into the bushes."

"Sleep deprivation?" Matt asked — because that seemed like the most reasonable explanation. And right now, he was all for those.

"Most likely," she said, Matt feeling a slight sense of achievement when she agreed so freely. "Your brain starts seeing things when you get past a certain point of exhaustion, and so the story goes: if you see a black creature on the road, you pull off and get some rest, pronto . Unless you want it to be the last thing you ever see." 

"Jesus… " Foggy puffed out air through his lips and sat back. "But that's not really a ghost though is it? More of a… "

" — a sign from God." Matt was thinking out loud again. He froze for a moment and Karen made a soft pondering sound that was probably only audible to him. 

"I never thought about it that way, but I guess."

Who was being the philosophical one now?

"Anyway," she went on. "This guy at the diner, I think his name was... Lucas. He was telling me how he saw the black dog on the previous night's drive, so he pulls into a layby to hunker down and get some rest, and when he does he has this crazy nightmare, really vivid; people crawling all over his truck, banging, scratching, trying to break in — " Matt felt his brow furrowing.

"Now," she said, "bare in mind, this guy is in the middle of nowhere. No people around for miles. So you can imagine how he felt when he woke, and there was something trying the handle of his cabin on the passenger side. Just slowly wiggling the handle, back and forth, back and forth…"

Matt was listening now… listening _intently._ And Foggy's heart rate was up. So were — _annoyingly_ — the hairs on the back of his neck.

"And then when they had no luck with that door, they tried the other… _tapping_ and _scraping… "_

"Serial killer," Foggy said flatly. "Gotta be a serial killer."

Karen ignored Foggy's humour as a coping mechanism, instead choosing to carry on at pace, her voice swirling, full of mystery, over the table between them. "But as quick as it came, it just… disappeared.' She whispered, "Lucas was _terrified._ Said he just sat there in the dark for hours, afraid to open his curtains because of who, of what he might see in the woods…"

Matt cleared his throat. "So uh, what happened to him?"

"Well of course morning eventually came, and he went out to take a look at his truck; inspect for damage… but there wasn't any. Except…"

She paused and Matt realised he'd been holding a slice of pizza half way between his mouth and the table for an embarrassingly long time.

 _"Except… "_ she said again, "all over his truck, all over the cabin, the hood, the windows… were what looked like tiny human hand prints. Perfectly formed… _hundreds of them."_

"Feral children?" The suggestion sounded almost serious. _"Feral children -serial killers?"_

Matt broke.

 _"Racoons."_ Karen said.

Matt chuckled and the pizza slice hit the edge of the box with a slap. "Dammit Karen." 

She grinned out a satisfied smile. "Yeah. So anyway, it turns out — racoons really are everywhere." She said it with a bitter fondness that clearly came from experience. "They'd been trying to break into his truck all night because this guy apparently hauled baked goods or something."

"I preferred my ending." 

"I think racoons is a good outcome." Matt was positively sure that he shouldn't be as breathing as hard as he was.

"Wait," Foggy said, "so _you've_ never actually seen a ghost?"

"I never said that." She was making up for lost time with the pizza, folding a slice in on itself and stuffing it into her mouth. "I was just warming you up."

Matt felt Foggy glance over to him again knowing what he must be thinking — tall tales couldn't have the same impact on people who could read heartbeats. 

Apparently untrue.

And the scarier thing was, Karen's heart had been nothing but steady since the minute she'd started talking, and Matt was enjoying her voice far too much to complain, even if she did seem to be casting some kind of spell that meant he was becoming increasingly suspicious of _every_

_Damn._

_Sound_.

Karen cleared her throat a little loudly, enough to jarr Matt from his trance before she began again. "This ones uh, a little closer to home I guess." Matt settled backwards and found his hands poised in his lap. He imagined this was how you were supposed to feel sitting around a cosy fire in the woods — except, they weren't in the woods, they were in the conference room, and they weren't sitting around a roaring fire; they were sitting around a lukewarm laptop.

It was kind of wholesome, though.

"When we were kids," Karen continued, "I was maybe 13,14 at the time, our parents used to take us camping for a couple of weekends in the summer. That couple of weekends was pretty much their only time off, and we'd really look forward to it. Dad would drive us all the way up state in his old truck, and we'd always end up in the mountains somewhere. I can't remember where exactly, but we'd hike for maybe a couple of hours; Kevin would always complain that his feet hurt about a half hour in, and I'd have to carry his pack to keep him quiet. Anyway, we always end up in this same place. Really secluded, deep in the woods, absolutely beautiful. We'd set up camp there in the clearing, a short walk from a little river. Me and Kevin used to go fishing there in the early mornings, catch something for lunch if we were lucky. And we'd build a fire, toast marshmallows, all that stuff."

"Sounds pretty good." It sounded much more than that, if Matt was being honest.

Karen smiled softly. "Yeah, yeah it was. And my dad… well, he liked to be prepared. Control freak, even back then. So we had this huge tent, plenty of room for at least six people, which meant me and Kevin got this whole section just to ourselves… like the ultimate den the woods. A kid's dream, really."

Foggy interjected, "what's so scary about this exactly?" 

Karen just smiled.

"This one summer, this one night… and remember it because it wasn't really night time at all… the days were so long that it was getting light out at I guess maybe, 4 or 5am." Karen took a breath and this time Matt felt it shake, different than it did before. "I open my eyes, look up at the tent roof And get the strangest feeling… "

Foggy had resumed quietness. Matt spoke because it felt natural to ask. "What feeling?"

Karen stuttered. "Just... Silence," she said, "just total silence. I mean it's early morning; dawn, or thereabouts. And there wasn't a bird.. or an insect or a sound. Anywhere."

"Okay that's a little freaky." Foggy shuffled in his seat. "… wait...is that a little freaky?"

"Has either one of you spent any time in the woods?" Karen asked while already knowing the answer. 

The answer was no.

Matt shook his head for the benefit of the story, Foggy too.

"Well if you had you'd know, when things go quiet like that… it means… " she paused, "well it depends who you ask I guess."

"Who you ask?" Matt was engrossed now.

"Most people will tell you it's a sign there's a predator nearby. A bear, mountain lion… but you go a little further north, people there might say other stuff too."

 _"Yeahhhh_ , I'm out," Foggy said then.

"But anyway," she broke the heavy silence after a few expertly held seconds, long enough for Foggy to be distracted once again by curiosity. "I don't actually believe in all that stuff." Matt released the breath he'd been holding that he was thankful Karen couldn't sense. "All I knew was, it sounded quiet outside, and I thought; I should probably be quiet too. So," she whispered, "I put my head down and I try to go back to sleep. But clearly I can't, because, I just can't, for the life of me...shake this feeling…. And after a few minutes pass, and I prop myself up on one elbow and take a look around the tent. Then I see it…down at the foot end is this bump under the blankets. First, I should explain, that uh, it gets pretty cold up there at night time, so I liked to sleep with tonnes of blankets," she chuckled lightly. "I still do actually." Matt thought that was a nice image. "So at first I think maybe I've just kicked them into a weird shaped pile, and it's early, I'm still half asleep, and maybe, maybe ... that's why that pile sort of looks like a person."

Foggy muttered an impossible quiet — "Oh Jesus," under his breath.

"Like they're... you know, sitting," she said, cross-legged with my blanket draped over them. It's still a little dark too, hazey... my eyes are still adjusting, and my first thought is.. _Kevin._ Kevin's playing a prank on me — we did that to each other a lot. So my reaction is to smile… "

Matt was focused so much in her voice and the cadence of her breath now that everything else around him had faded away.

"I smile and lean forward and I touch this… this _someone,_ in this blanket. And my finger just pushes into their head, like, I feel it — like, if I was to do it to you right now… " she reached over to Matt, pressing her finger in his forehead with a light pressure, his breath caught. "It's firm and warm at the end of my finger, just like you are, there's little bit of resistance to it.."

Karen stopped then, smiled like she might be acting out the whole thing in her mind. 

Heart rate check.

Uh. Steady. 

_Still_ steady.

Mm.

"Then I laugh." She said, I just _laugh_ . And it must have been quite loud because something stirs next to me, grumbles. And that's when I look and see that Kevin is exactly where I left him, sound asleep in his sleeping bag."

"Nope," Foggy declared, _"Nooooohhh_ thank you." 

Matt was aware of the hairs on his arms standing to attention now too, a shiver creeping over his entire body.

"Obviously I panic and scare the shit out of everyone screaming at some ludicrously early hour of the morning. Kevin wakes up. Starts to cry, and when I turn back to look at the base of the tent, it's gone… the blankets are flat.. and there's nothing there."

After a pause, she added, "The weirdest thing though,… is that, suddenly I notice the birds. The insects," Karen leaned in then, for some reason Matt leaned in too. "I can hear the morning now… everything just seems, like it's... _back to normal…"_

A few moments of silence hung between the three of them before there was a _BANG_ so loud and so unexpected that Matt felt himself jolt back, Foggy's voice unbearably shrill in his ears. His chair rolled into his desk, papers falling, hands flailing, chests clutching.

And Karen was laughing — _cackling,_ actually, as she removed her hand out from underneath the table.

They'd been played.

"Sorry guys." She took a final thirsty swig of beer like it was water.

"Wow."

"I officially hate you." Foggy said, still panting melodramatically. Matt couldn't comment — he wiped his hands down his shirt, now aware that his palms had been…sweating.

Why were they sweating?

"Cancel our yearly trip to the woods Matt."

"Done."

Karen started laughing again. "You guys are great listeners."

"Thank you," Matt got up. "Josie's anyone?" 

Foggy practically bounded for the door.

"Am I still invited?" Karen asked, smirking.

"Only if you don't talk," Foggy said stiffly, "Halloween is banned and we shall never speak of this again." 

"Deal," she agreed.

Matt held Karen's coat for her to slip her arms into but Foggy was already out the door and halfway down the hallway. "Quite a story Miss Page," Matt said then.

Karen gathered her scarf around her neck, locking the office door behind her. "Thanks Matt. Did I pass?"

Matt cocked his head.

"Was it true?" She asked again, testing him now.

"Uhm… it seemed it, actually..." he admitted. Realising that doing so had in fact made it much more creepy. "Maybe uh, maybe don't tell…"

"No," she agreed. "He might never sleep again." There was something devious in her voice that Matt liked. He smiled.

"I might not either."

"What are you two whispering about?" Foggy half-yelled from where he was waiting for them at the door to stairs. "God you're so _sneaky,_ both of you! You're making me nervous."

"It's nothing Fogs."

"Nothing at all." Karen broke step in front of Matt, he flicked his cane out, and turned out the lights.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Sorry if onomatopoeia offends you, I don't know how to write sudden noises 😂


End file.
